Kinetic Energy is NOT Momentum

Beginning students often confuse kinetic energy and momentum.
Kinetic energy and momentum are NOT THE SAME!

Scalar Versus Vector:

An important difference is that momentum is a vector quantity - it
has a direction in space, and momenta combine like forces do. Kinetic
energy is a scalar quantity - it has no direction in space, and
kinetic energies combine like "regular numbers."

Dependence on Velocity:

The momentum of an object is proportional to the object's velocity
- if you double its velocity, you double its momentum. The kinetic
energy of an object is proportional to the square of
the object's velocity - if you double its velocity, you quadruple its
kinetic energy. This has important consequences...

A Thought Experiment:

Suppose that you were captured by an evil physicist who gave you
the following choice:

You
must either:

Stand in front of a 1000 kg truck moving at 1 m/s, or

Stand in front of a 1 kg meatball moving at 1000 m/s.

What's your choice?

Hopefully, you picked the truck! It's a big truck, but it is
moving rather slowly (about walking speed), so assuming you don't
fall down when it hits you (That would be bad...) the truck is just
going to bump into you and move you out of the way.

On the other hand, you probably suspect intuitively that the
meatball is a very dangerous object. It isn't that massive, but it is
moving very fast (about 10 football fields per second) - and when it
hits you it would do considerable damage to you, and keep going!

Consider the momentum and kinetic energy of the truck and the
meatball:

We know intuitively that the meatball is more dangerous than the
truck, yet the momenta of the truck and the meatball are the same. On
the other hand, the meatball has 1 000 times the kinetic energy of
the truck! Clearly, momentum and kinetic energy tell different things
about an object!